Making sense of Venezuela with David Kilcullen

The Thematic Edge opens 2026 with its first guest, David Kilcullen, retired Australian Army colonel, intellectual architect of both the “Surge” in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the world’s foremost authority on counterinsurgency. Colonel Kilcullen helps us make sense of what happened in Venezuela on 5 January and what to expect going forward.
The discussion is structured around three questions that matter for markets.
* First, what actually happened operationally, and what it reveals about escalation control, deterrence, and the limits of legacy air defence systems.
* Second, what the episode signals about US grand strategy, the “Trump corollary of the Monroe Doctrine, the return of gunboat diplomacy, and the use of suzerainty style constraints to shape trade, currency choice, and commercial alignment.
* Third, what long-term “success” means and what must be achieved to meet it, including political stabilisation of Venezuela, establishment of payments systems, control over resources, and how quickly the US needs to move before the window closes.
Along the way, we challenge the prevailing narratives including claims of pre-negotiation with or foreknowledge of China and Russia, implications for the emergent global order, Taiwan, Ukraine, Europe, other regions’ security, who might be “next,” the scramble for resource control, what to watch for, and Venezuela’s potential as a test case for dollarization via stablecoins. With so much to talk about and such an insightful guest, this episode is longer than usual, but it will be required listening/viewing for anyone interested in assessing risks and making informed decisions in today’s rapidly shifting global order.
Full transcript
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Marvin Barth: Good evening, and welcome to…
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Marvin Barth: the Thematic Edge. We are very excited, to start 2026 with our very first guest on the Thematic Edge. So, this time I’m not only joined by my longtime friend and colleague, Mark Farrington.
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Marvin Barth: Who’s going to join me in asking some of the questions of our guests.
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Marvin Barth: But I’m also joined by another very old friend of mine, David Kilcolon, and we are very fortunate to have him.
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Marvin Barth: for reasons we can discuss another time. My nickname for him is the International Man of Mystery, and most of that has to do with the fact that I can never get ahold of him, and he seems to be in some crazy place without cell phone connections.
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Marvin Barth: So we’re very lucky to have him, because he is exactly the right person to talk to
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Marvin Barth: about the events in Venezuela that occurred over the weekend. David is a retired colonel from the Australian
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Marvin Barth: Army. He, was a key advisor in both the Bush and Obama administrations. He has a consulting business, Cordillera Applications Group.
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Marvin Barth: That consults to many of the leading militaries, military alliances.
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Marvin Barth: and companies, around the world on security issues. He is universally acknowledged as the world’s foremost authority on counterinsurgencies.
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Marvin Barth: And he also happens to be a tremendously good, grants strategist, as illustrated by his last book, The Dragons and the Snakes. All his books are fantastic. I highly encourage you to go out and
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Marvin Barth: read them.
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Marvin Barth: David, welcome, and thank you for joining us.
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David Kilcullen: Thanks, Marvin. It’s an honor to be here, and my publisher thanks you for that very blatant plug of my books.
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Marvin Barth: well-deserved. I mean, if you want to understand any of the military or geostrategic developments of the last 20 years.
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Marvin Barth: you have to read David Gilkullen’s books. You know, Counterinsurgency is literally the field manual for counterinsurgency, not only for the U.S. military, but for most militaries around the world at this point.
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Marvin Barth: Out of the Mountains really described many of the things that we are now seeing take place, whether it was in Gaza or Ukraine. All of those things were basically forecast by David over a decade ago in that book.
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Marvin Barth: And in terms of the best possible framework for thinking about the geostrategic environment and the challenges that Western democracies face.
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Marvin Barth: Both militarily, economically, and strategically. You know, The Dragons and the Snake was second to no book out there, so, you know…
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Marvin Barth: I’ll give you another plug there. Now, before we… Before we go on,
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Marvin Barth: The, I do want, to remind everyone that nothing on this podcast should be considered, financial advice. You need to do your own research. We are providing information here, and especially on this topic, where we are literally in the fog of war, even though it’s an undeclared war.
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Marvin Barth: You should not rely on any of this information as being factual, because everything is up in the air right now, and we are doing our best to make sense of the information that is available.
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Marvin Barth: So with that, let’s start with, I actually wanted to structure this in sort of 3 segments that I think
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Marvin Barth: best fit your expertise, Dave. The first is just, like, diagnostic. What actually happened? You know, if you were a theater commander or something, and you were getting in this, this information, or you were,
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Marvin Barth: the head of the PLA trying to figure out what the heck the Americans just did.
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Marvin Barth: How would we assess what actually happened?
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Marvin Barth: Based on the information we have, today, the 5th of January. The second is really getting to that geostrategic point.
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Marvin Barth: you know, what are the grand strategy implications of this, not just for the U.S. and for the region, but globally, and then finally get back to where you are the, you know, clear, acknowledged expert, on counterinsurgency, which is really, and you’ve emphasized this over and over, really about creating a stable society, which is what it’s going to take to make this operation ultimately successful. So we want to get that.
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Marvin Barth: And in the end, I think we’ll get to, if we have some time, some, markets issues, which, feel free to, ask Mark and I questions around that.
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David Kilcullen: Absolutely.
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Marvin Barth: So let’s start with… I mean…
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Marvin Barth: One of the things that has been floated around a lot, is that this was somehow, pre-arranged, right? That this was a negotiated.
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Marvin Barth: settlement. And, you know, there are several signs, at least to my untrained eye, that suggest that. One, the strikes that were… that took place were actually quite limited, it seems.
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Marvin Barth: And there are a lot of, anti-aircraft weapons in, Venezuela. Their army may not be fabulously trained, but they’ve got lots of, equipment from, all their, foreign friends. And yet you were able to have a helicopter-led,
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Marvin Barth: exfil within a couple of hours without losing anybody. And then …